Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
In an article titled Another Weapon for OWS: Pull Your Money Out of BofA, Matt Taibbi wrote that “when it comes to commercial banking, Bank of America is as bad as it gets.” He said he believed the markets seemed to agree as the bank had a credit downgrade recently “to just above junk status.”
He continued: The only reason the bank is not rated even lower than that is that it is Too Big To Fail. The whole world knows that if Bank of America implodes – whether because of the vast number of fraud suits it faces for mortgage securitization practices, or because of the time bomb of toxic assets on its balance sheets – the U.S. government will probably step in to one degree or another and save it.
After the credit downgrade in September, Bloomberg reported that Bank of America “moved derivatives from its Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits…” Taibbi said the transfer involved trillions of dollars in risky derivatives contracts.
According to Bloomberg: The Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. disagree over the transfers, which are being requested by counterparties, said the people, who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The Fed has signaled that it favors moving the derivatives to give relief to the bank holding company, while the FDIC, which would have to pay off depositors in the event of a bank failure, is objecting, said the people. The bank doesn’t believe regulatory approval is needed, said people with knowledge of its position.
Here’s how Ryan Chittum explained it in the Columbia Review of Journalism: Bank of America moved risky insurance contracts to a taxpayer-insured company, ostensibly to save money. The FDIC, which would now be on the hook for losses if the derivatives collapse, is not happy, and the move raises more questions about the health of Bank of America, which has already seen its market value sliced in half this year.
Kirsten Pittman reported in The Charlotte Observer that more than a dozen Democratic members of Congress are concerned about the reported transfer “of financial instruments from Merrill Lynch into the bank’s deposit-taking arm”—which they say “could put taxpayers on the hook for big losses – three years after the bank received billions in bailouts from the federal government.” The Congressmen wrote to federal regulators to ask why they allowed the movement of derivatives into the retail bank, which has deposits that are insured by the FDIC. In a statement, Rep. Brad Miller of North Carolina said, “This kind of transaction raises many issues of obvious public concern. If the bank subsidiary failed, innocent taxpayers could end up paying off exotic derivatives.”
William Black, a professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a former bank regulator, said, “The concern is that there is always an enormous temptation to dump the losers on the insured institution. We should have fairly tight restrictions on that.”
So much for financial reform. Just three years ago, Bank of America received $45 billion in bailout money during the financial crisis. It doesn’t seem that much has changed since 2008, does it?
Edited to Add:
SOURCES
BofA Said to Split Regulators Over Moving Merrill Derivatives to Bank Unit (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg Eyes Bank of America’s Derivatives Move (Columbia Review of Journalism)
Another Weapon for OWS: Pull Your Money Out of BofA (Matt Taibbi)
Bank of America derivatives transfer is criticized by Democrats in Congress (The Charlotte Observer/McClatchy)
BofA Says Regulators May Limit Transfer of Merrill Contracts
By Hugh Son – Nov 11, 2011
Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-11/bofa-says-regulators-may-limit-transfer-of-merrill-derivatives.html
Excerpt:
Bank of America Corp. (BAC) may be prevented by regulators from shifting derivatives contracts into the books of a deposit-taking unit, potentially forcing the lender to hand over more collateral to counterparties.
The lender has designated the retail-deposit unit, Bank of America NA, as the new counterparty on some Merrill Lynch contracts after the company’s credit ratings were cut in September, it said last week in a filing. The Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. have disagreed over the moves, and they are now discussing whether to allow future transfers, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
“Our ability to substitute or make changes to these agreements to meet counterparties’ requests may be subject to certain limitations, including counterparty willingness, regulatory limitations on naming Bank of America NA as the new counterparty, and the type or amount of collateral required,” the lender wrote in the quarterly regulatory filing.
At stake for Bank of America is the power to curb billions of dollars in collateral payments to counterparties that could be required after a credit-rating downgrade. The company, which has lost more than half its market value this year amid rising expenses from soured mortgages, is vulnerable to further rating cuts, the bank said in the Nov. 3 regulatory filing.
Limits on moving contracts from Merrill Lynch to the deposit unit could “adversely affect” results, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank said in the filing. The transfers lower collateral obligations because the retail unit still has a higher rating than the Merrill Lynch subsidiary after the Sept. 21 downgrades from Moody’s Investors Service.
Shifting Risk
“It’s a game of ‘move the risk,’” said Mark Williams, a former Federal Reserve examiner who lectures on financial-risk management at Boston University. “It makes sense for Bank of America, but the broader implication is that it makes the retail operations potentially riskier. If there is another downgrade, you have the possibility of falling off a credit cliff.”
The Fed has signaled that it favors moving the derivatives to give relief to the bank holding company, people familiar with its position said Oct. 18. The FDIC, which would have to pay depositors in a failure, objected, the people said.
The other two major ratings firms, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings, are re-evaluating Bank of America and may also cut its credit grades, the lender said in the quarterly filing. The full scope of damage from a credit-rating downgrade is “inherently uncertain” because it depends upon the behavior of counterparties and customers, the bank said.
Elaine,
Looked at the list from your link and couldn’t decide where to stick Christmas trees. (anybody who thinks this 15 cent tax won’t be passed on to consumers is not thinking clearly)
Financial Industry Collects The Most Government Tax Subsidies
A new Citizens for Tax Justice report detailing how little corporations pay in federal corporate income tax also noted that financial firms receive the highest percentage of federal tax subsidies, collecting nearly 17 percent of the tax largesse that the government hands out. The largest single recipient of federal tax subsidies over the last three years was mega-bank Wells Fargo.
Check out the chart at the following link:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/07/363234/financial-tax-subsidies/
Elaine,
I know they won’t be jailed by the current group of lackeys. These are the people who have already committed financial crimes. They remain at large to do even more harm. I am articulating what should happen. These people have brought down our economy, hell they are in progress for destroying the world economy.
It is just like the police state. It’s time to take a stand. We the people are the only hope of holding these banksters to account.
One purpose I had in pointed out our GDP is the impossibility of these crimes going on forever. This system, devised by the criminals, will reach its own end. It is not sustainable. It’s a matter of will it reach its own end leaving behind complete devastation of the earth and it’s creatures or will we make a stand on behalf of this planet and all it’s creatures?
To do nothing is to consent to the destruction of everything of value in life.
Jill,
I doubt they’ll be jailed. They have too much money. They are members of the entitled elite who own politicians.
Did you see that Glenn Greenwald has a new book out titled “With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful?”
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/25/book_release_with_liberty_and_justice_for_some/singleton/
The GDP of the US is around 15 trillion. This obligation alone is multiples of that. I would also add that this should put to rest the idea that financial speculation is a “jobs creator”.
This is another inside job. Those involved, all of them, need to exposed and jailed.
BoA Dumps $75 Trillion In Derivatives On Taxpayers, Super Committee Looks Away. Seize BoA Now.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/08/1034201/–BoA-Dumps-$75-Trillion-In-Derivatives-On-Taxpayers,-Super-Committee-Looks-Away
Excerpt:
It’s real money, especially since “Bank of America Deathwatch” financial pundits have multiplied on the web and it has become a bit of a geek guessing game. When will BoA finally tank? And when it tanks, the question becomes, who will walk away with all their money, and who will be left holding the bag? The deal just snuck through with the Federal Reserve’s, and implicitly, Congress’s approval insures Wall Street casino gambler’s debts by moving them into accounts meant for penny-pinching grandmas.
Citing Bloomberg, financial commentator Avery Goodman tells us:
Even if we net out the notional value of the derivatives involved, down to the net potential obligation, the amount is so large that the United States could not hope to pay it off without a major dollar devaluation, if a major contingency actually occurred and a large part of the derivatives were triggered.
A bailout for one company’s most irresponsible investors triggering a major dollar devaluation? This is the kind of thing that starts revolutions.
Goodman reports:
Bank of America (BAC) has shifted about $22 trillion worth of derivative obligations from Merrill Lynch and the BAC holding company to the FDIC insured retail deposit division. Along with this information came the revelation that the FDIC insured unit was already stuffed with $53 trillion worth of these potentially toxic obligations, making a total of $75 trillion.
Without going too far into bewildering financial jargon, it’s like this: Your wildest son is asking you to co-sign for a debt. If he can’t make his payments, you are on the hook. How much is the debt? He doesn’t know. Just sign on the dotted line.
Meanwhile the “super committee” is looking for a trillion or so dollars in hits to everything, including Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, to keep the budget from going any more out of whack. It’s urgent, they say, for us to stop spending like drunken sailors. But at the same time they just whipped out a pen and signed for junior, crossing their fingers that something won’t happen which is almost inevitable.
Too Big To Fail Casino Banks Make $518 Billion Bet On PIIGS Sovereign Debt
http://problembanklist.com/to-big-to-fail-casino-banks-make-billion-bet-on-piigs-sovereign-debt-0430/
Excerpt:
The “Too Big To Fail Banks” are at it again, making huge speculative bets on the odds of sovereign default by Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. The costly lessons of the derivatives debacle of 2008 have apparently been forgotten.
In 2008, the Too Big To Fail banks bought massive amounts of credit default swaps (CDS) to protect themselves from loss on their huge holdings of subprime mortgages. By purchasing CDS from institutions such as insurance giant AIG, the banks were able to convince regulators that their net exposure to losses on holdings of toxic mortgage instruments was minimal. So how did that work out?
As the mortgage market collapsed in 2008, AIG’s payoff liability on the CDS it wrote soared. AIG was forced to post additional collateral with counterparties as its credit rating was downgraded and the company faced collapse. If AIG had been allowed to collapse, the too big to fail banks who thought they were hedged, would have instead faced losses in the hundreds of billions. The failure of AIG would have resulted in huge losses to the banks and AIG bondholders.
Instead of being allowed to fail, AIG was bailed out by both the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve who agreed to a financial commitment of up to $182 billion. The final amount lent or invested to bail out AIG by the Treasury and the Fed ultimately totaled $140 billion. AIG still owes the U.S. Treasury almost $50 billion according to propublica.org which tracks the cost of taxpayer financed bailouts.
It wasn’t until a year and a half later that the full truth about the AIG bailout was revealed. In January 2010, the NY Fed was forced to release documents showing that over $100 billion of the taxpayer bailout funds given to AIG were transferred to major financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch to make them whole on credit default swaps with AIG.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, commenting on the AIG bailout, made the specious argument that the AIG bailout was necessary since the Feds had no authority to close AIG. “If a federal agency had (appropriate authority) on September 16, (2008), they could have been used to put AIG into conservatorship or receivership, unwind it slowly, protect policyholders, and impose haircuts on creditors and counterparties as appropriate. That outcome would have been far preferable to the situation we find ourselves in now.”
AIG further infuriated taxpayers by sending its executives to a posh California retreat one week after the bailout, at a cost of almost $500,000. In early 2009, mere months after the bailout, AIG had the audacity to announce bonuses of $450 million for its financial unit and company wide bonuses totaling $1.2 billion.
Also Off Topic:
Credit Suisse To Disclose Names Of U.S. Clients Suspected Of Tax Evasion
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/08/credit-suisse-us-clients-tax-evasion_n_1081453.html
Excerpt:
Reuters
Credit Suisse AG, Switzerland’s second-largest bank, has begun notifying certain U.S. clients suspected of offshore tax evasion that it intends to turn over their names to the Internal Revenue Service, with the help of Swiss tax authorities.
Credit Suisse’s notification by letter, a copy of which was obtained on Monday by Reuters, says the handover of names and account details will take place following a recent formal request for the information by the IRS.
The move by Credit Suisse to disclose American client names and account information is the latest twist in a showdown between Switzerland and the United States over the battered tradition of Swiss bank secrecy.
U.S. authorities, who suspect tens of thousands of wealthy Americans of evading billions of dollars in taxes through Swiss private banks in recent years, are conducting a widening criminal investigation into scores of Swiss banks, including Credit Suisse.
Off Topic:
Wall Street Transaction Tax Would Raise $350 Billion
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/07/wall-street-transaction-tax-revenue_n_1080493.html
Excerpt:
WASHINGTON — A minuscule tax on financial transactions proposed by congressional Democrats would raise more than $350 billion over the next nine years, according to an analysis by the Joint Tax Committee, a nonpartisan congressional scorekeeping panel.
The analysis was sent Monday to the offices of Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), the lawmakers who proposed the tax, and provided to The Huffington Post.
The Wall Street Trading and Speculators Tax Act would impose a tax of 0.03 percent on financial transactions, meaning that longterm investors would barely notice it, but traders who move rapidly in and out of positions would feel its sting and, the authors hope, reduce the volume of their speculation in response.
The European Union is pressing forward with a financial transaction tax, though it is encountering some resistance from the United Kingdom, the financial center of Europe.
In order to be effective, the tax would need to be implemented in most major industrial countries where trading is done.
Some believe that the global nature of the Occupy Wall Street movement will boost the chances of the transaction tax being signed into law. While the movement has been criticized for lacking specific demands, protesters have voiced their support for a “meaningful” tax being placed on Wall Street trading.
anon nurse,
that interview with Abramoff was disturbing. What a snake.
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/718959/jack_abramoff_gives_away_the_corrupt_insider%27s_game_in_%22our%22_congress_on_60_minutes/#paragraph5
Craig,
“I would argue that there are no mistakes when it comes to the Satanic Psychopaths!”
That is hilarious! I don’t believe in accidents either!!!
MF Global had quite a few of the smartest men in the financial industry managing their assets. They also had access to the ultimate insider info, because their CEO, Jon Corzine, was a Federal Reserve Bankster insider. So, how could so many of the nation’s brightest make such boneheaded decisions?
Once again I want to emphasize that for every loser in the financial derivatives market, there is an equal and opposite winner, making tons of cash.
Since 70% of the 1500 trillion dollar derivatives market is bets against interest rates going up or down, one would think that the former Chairman of Goldman Sachs would have some kind of clue on what the banksters were doing with interest rates. Some would argue that the loss of $40 billion dollars was a huge mistake. I would argue that there are no mistakes when it comes to the Satanic Psychopaths!
Former Financial Regulator William Black: Occupy Wall Street A Counter to White-Collar Fraud
Democracy Now
October 19, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zq-sO_uNaFw
Note: Black is a white collar criminologist.
Summary:
Broadcasting on the road from Kansas City, Missouri, we’re joined by William Black, a white-collar criminologist, former financial regulator, and author of “The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One.” Black teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and recently took part in Occupy Kansas City. “If you look [at the Occupy protests], not just nationwide, but worldwide, you will see some pretty consistent themes developing,” Black says. “Those themes include: we have to deal with the systemically dangerous institutions, the 20 biggest banks that the administration is saying are ticking time bombs, that as soon as one of them fails, we go back into a global crisis. We should fix that. There’s no reason to have institutions that large. That’s a theme. That accountability is a theme, that we should put these felons in prison… That we should get jobs now, and that we should deal with the foreclosure crisis. So those are four very common themes that you can see in virtually any of these protest sites… I think, over time, you won’t necessarily have some grand written agenda, but you’ll have, as I say, increasing consensus. And it’s a very broad consensus.”
Excerpt:
AMY GOODMAN: We are on the road in Kansas City, Missouri, in front of a live audience of public television broadcasters at NETA, the National Educational Telecommunications Association conference. Kansas City is known for its barbecues, blues and boulevards. It’s where Republican presidential [candidate] Herman Cain was chair of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank.
It’s also known as the home of the Hallmark Company, the largest manufacturer of greeting cards in the United States. However, those greeting cards are not likely to contain the words of a former resident of this area, the famed African-American poet Langston Hughes. He was born in Joplin, Missouri, but spent most of his childhood in nearby Lawrence, Kansas. In his 1951 poem “Harlem,” Hughes asked a simple question: “What happens to a dream deferred?” Well, let’s listen to Langston Hughes in his own voice.
LANGSTON HUGHES: What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore —
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over —
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Missouri native Langston Hughes. “Or does it explode?” As protesters with Occupy Kansas City join in solidarity with protesters across the country and around the world, Langston Hughes may finally have his answer.
Well, our first guest is one of the many people who have participated in Occupy Kansas City. William Black is a white-collar criminologist, former financial regulator, worked in the Reagan administration, and is author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One. He is associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
William Black, welcome to Democracy Now!, as we broadcast here in Kansas City.
WILLIAM BLACK: Thank you so much.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s very good to have you with us. What does it mean to be a white-collar criminologist?
WILLIAM BLACK: It means Rodney Dangerfield: we get no respect. Virtually all the funding goes to blue-collar. Virtually all the resources go to it. So it’s a thin group of folks that look at the most elite criminals who cause most of the property and most of the physical damage in the world.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think has to happen now? And what does this have to do with the Occupy Wall Street protests that have expanded here in Kansas City and across the globe? There are more than a thousand demonstrations that have been held in the last weeks.
WILLIAM BLACK: Well, we have companion problems. We’ve got to stop this dynamic that’s producing recurrent, intensifying crises. I mean, this one has devastated the nation. The next one would probably be equivalent to the Great Depression. And part of that answer—but only part of it—is to hold the folks accountable, especially the most elite, who caused this crisis. And they did it through fraud, and they did it through fraud in what we call the “C-suites” —the CEOs, the COOs — so, the absolute top.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean by fraud?
WILLIAM BLACK: Well, I mean just what we say in the law: fraud is when you use deceit to steal something from someone. And so, the essence of fraud is, I get you to trust me, and then I betray that trust for gain. And as a result, there’s no more effective acid against destroying trust than fraud, particularly at the elite levels. And when you destroy trust, you destroy economies, families, democracies.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, you worked in the Reagan administration. Explain the trajectory of how we have fallen so far. Where do you feel it began?
WILLIAM BLACK: Well, it’s, you know, quite remarkable. It actually, of course, begins in the Carter administration with very substantial deregulation, although I would say of a better sort. I mean, most people don’t think trucking should be heavily regulated, and that’s the type of thing he deregulated. By the Reagan administration, they were—deregulate everything, at the worst possible circumstances, when you had no one looking. And the result was a disaster. It was the savings and loan crisis, at least the second phase of it. And if it had not been contained, it would have been at least a trillion-dollar crisis.
It was contained despite the Reagan administration, and despite a lot of prominent Democrats, as well, who were very heavily in the same camp. So we acted against the wishes of the administration, against the wishes—a majority of the House co-sponsored a resolution saying don’t reregulate—the Keating Five—many people remember those five senators—most of the media, what the political scientists considered the third most powerful trade association in America. And by the way, that’s why I have a message of hope. If we could succeed in those circumstances, it’s far easier to succeed now.
AMY GOODMAN: And how would these powerful financial entities be held accountable? What exactly should happen?
WILLIAM BLACK: It all starts with the regulators, which is why it’s all not started here, because we have, of course, the wrecking crew, Bush’s wrecking crew, what Tom Frank called them, in charge, and they stopped making criminal referrals. So our agency, in the savings and loan crisis, made over 10,000 criminal referrals to the FBI. That same agency, in this crisis, made zero criminal referrals. If you don’t get people pointing the way and pointing to the top of the organization, you don’t get effective prosecutions. So, in the peak of the savings and loan crisis, we had a thousand FBI agents. This crisis has losses 70 times larger than the savings and loan crisis. And the savings and loan crisis, when it happened, was considered the largest financial scandal in U.S. history. So we’re now 70 times worse. And as recently as 2007, we had 120 FBI agents—one-eighth as many FBI agents for a crisis 70 times larger. And they looked not at the big folks, but almost exclusively at the little folks.
AMY GOODMAN: William Black, you mentioned Bush’s wrecking crew, but we live in the time of President Obama.
WILLIAM BLACK: And we’ve been living for some years in the time of President Obama, and he has done absolutely nothing to reestablish the criminal referral process. And as a result, there are virtually no prosecutions of any elites.
When people tell you this crisis couldn’t have been stopped—I’ll give you two simple things. First, these liars’ loans that caused this crisis—and it’s overwhelmingly lenders that put the lie in liars’ loans—they were big in 1990 and 1991. We killed them by regular regulatory means and stopped a crisis for a decade. Our successors—I mean, how hard is it to figure out that something called a “liar’s loan” shouldn’t be allowed? This was not tough.
The second thing is, the FBI warned, in open testimony in the House of Representatives, picked up by the national media, in September 2004, that there was an epidemic of mortgage fraud and predicted it would cause a financial crisis—their exact words. And the regulators did nothing, because you had the Alan Greenspans of the world and the Harvey Pitts of the world, who were selected because they were the leading opponents of effective regulation in America. Well, you know, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy of regulatory failure, and then turn around and say, “Well, you can’t trust the government. It fails.”
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/10/19/former_financial_regulator_william_black_occupy
Bank of America Trying To Stick Taxpayers With A $74 Trillion Bill By Moving Derivatives Into FDIC-Insured Accounts
76 comments
By Susie Madrak
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/bank-america-trying-stick-taxpayers-7
Excerpt:
Now you would expect this move to be driven by adverse selection, that it, that BofA would move its WORST derivatives, that is, the ones that were riskiest or otherwise had high collateral posting requirements, to the sub. Bill Black confirmed that even though the details were sketchy, this is precisely what took place.
And remember, as we have indicated, there are some “derivatives” that should be eliminated, period. We’ve written repeatedly about credit default swaps, which have virtually no legitimate economic uses (no one was complaining about the illiquidity of corporate bonds prior to the introduction of CDS; this was not a perceived need among investors). They are an inherently defective product, since there is no way to margin adequately for “jump to default” risk and have the product be viable economically. CDS are systematically underpriced insurance, with insurers guaranteed to go bust periodically, as AIG and the monolines demonstrated.
The reason that commentators like Chris Whalen were relatively sanguine about Bank of America likely becoming insolvent as a result of eventual mortgage and other litigation losses is that it would be a holding company bankruptcy. The operating units, most importantly, the banks, would not be affected and could be spun out to a new entity or sold. Shareholders would be wiped out and holding company creditors (most important, bondholders) would take a hit by having their debt haircut and partly converted to equity.
This changes the picture completely. This move reflects either criminal incompetence or abject corruption by the Fed. Even though I’ve expressed my doubts as to whether Dodd Frank resolutions will work, dumping derivatives into depositaries pretty much guarantees a Dodd Frank resolution will fail. Remember the effect of the 2005 bankruptcy law revisions: derivatives counterparties are first in line, they get to grab assets first and leave everyone else to scramble for crumbs. So this move amounts to a direct transfer from derivatives counterparties of Merrill to the taxpayer, via the FDIC, which would have to make depositors whole after derivatives counterparties grabbed collateral. It’s well nigh impossible to have an orderly wind down in this scenario. You have a derivatives counterparty land grab and an abrupt insolvency. Lehman failed over a weekend after JP Morgan grabbed collateral.
But it’s even worse than that. During the savings & loan crisis, the FDIC did not have enough indeposit insurance receipts to pay for the Resolution Trust Corporation wind-down vehicle. It had to get more funding from Congress. This move paves the way for another TARP-style shakedown of taxpayers, this time to save depositors. No Congressman would dare vote against that. This move is Machiavellian, and just plain evil.
The FDIC is understandably ripshit.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-07/middle-class-pays-for-financial-market-mistakes-simon-johnson.html I posted something on the transfers Saturday but it is a good idea to post it again, Blouise.
I don’t know if anyone has posted this link and if so, I apologize for reposting, but this is interesting as people responded to the news about ATM fee ( now dropped because of consumer reaction) but this latest news about the transfers the FED permitted has increased people’s fear as to the safety of their savings accounts in the Wall Street Banks. Our local community bank is experiencing a real surge in transfers of savings accounts to their bank.
http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/11/04/credit-union-membership-skyrockets-650000-new-members-since-september-29/
Jill,
Inquiring minds want to know the answers!
I didn’t watch that video by him. I had seen another on RN and thought it was the same one. I just watched it now. That interview begins to address some questions. I hope Black is correct in speculating that someone in FDIC leaked it on behalf of the people. Whoever did, good for them!!! More leaks!!!!
So we need to know what happened at the FED. Who specifically discussed the matter? Should these people be under indictment by the DOJ? How did ML accumulate 75 trillion in “assets” during a repression (depression)? Who are these well connected people? What is the nature of their connection to the govt.? We the people, deserve answers!